Painted Cities by Alexai Galaviz-Budziszewski Page A

it right.”
    “What?” I asked him. I could still feel his biceps. He was still straining. The fibers of his muscle were fine and hard. “He’s not doing what right?”
    “ La vibora , the snake dance, he’s supposed to do it right after the dollar dance.”
    “It’s all right,” I told Papo.
    “No, bro, it’s your wedding. He’s supposed to do the snake dance. Fucking Indian ,” he said to the DJ, this time louder. I could hear the clink of beer bottles. Someone was tapping on the side of a glass with a knife, kiss the bride , they were saying. This was a Mexican wedding. I didn’t know where my wife was.
    I turned around and looked at the DJ. “It’s okay,” I told him. “Just go on with the dance music.” The DJ nodded.
    I gently pushed Papo back toward the tables, toward the bar packed with people I hadn’t seen in years, friends I’d felt obligated to invite, people I could never not love.
    “I just want it to be right,” Papo said. It sounded as if he was about to cry. I thought of Papo’s little girl, Crystal, his wife, Bernadette, who’d left him two years before, the cocaine habit that had him running to the restroom every hour, the .25 automatic he kept tucked under the armrest of his Cadillac Brougham.
    “I want it to be right for you,” he said.
    Papo turned and headed toward the bar. I put my arm around his shoulder.
    “It is right, bro,” I told him. “It is right.”
    Hours later I was in the banquet hall parking lot saying my last goodbyes. Most of the party guests had left, my in-laws, my father,my uncles. Only Papo was there, in the dim light of the streetlamps, and two other friends, Danny Boy and Mario, friends from many years past. Just to my left, sitting in the passenger seat of the car I had rented, was my wife. I could see her silhouette, the outline of her hair, the white shoulder of her wedding dress. I was anxious to leave, to start my new life.
    “Go be fucking married, then,” Papo said. He was smiling, he shook my hand. “Good luck,” Mario said. Danny Boy gave me a hug like I was leaving forever.
    “Go be fucking married, then,” Papo said, this time a little louder. “Motherfucker.”
    He was standing behind me. I could feel him there. I could see him out of the corner of my eye. I turned to look.
    Danny Boy pulled at Papo’s arm.
    “Mother fucker !” Papo said. He stepped toward me.
    Mario got in front of Papo.
    “Just go, bro,” Danny said.
    “ Motherfucker! ”
    I climbed into the rental car and shut the door. I could smell my wife. All night she had smelled beautiful.
    “What was that?” she asked me.
    “That was Papo,” I answered.
    In the rearview mirror Danny Boy and Mario were struggling to hold Papo back. I turned onto Damen Avenue. The three of them started fighting, there in an empty parking lot, on the South Side of Chicago.

MAXIMILIAN
     
    I want to tell you three memories of my cousin Maximilian. Two of them involve his fists.
    My cousin was a short man. He was, however, like everyone else on the Mexican side of my family, built like a brick two-flat. Maximilian was heavy and hard. He was a cannonball, the way my grandmother on my mother’s side was a cannonball, the way my uncle Blas was a cannonball. They were all skull, they were impossible to hug, but they were warm-blooded, steaming, like just standing next to them could get you through a winter’s day. My mother was like this. I miss her terribly.
    But Max, my cousin, Maximilian , was young. He was sixteen or so when my memories of him first begin. It was at his sister Irene’s cotillion, in the basement of Saint Procopius church on Eighteenth Street and Allport. I don’t know much about the planning. I was eight years old. But I know my sister, Delia, stood up in it. She was a dama , and my cousin on my father’s side, Little David, was her chambelán . They were off doing their own thing, dancing, waltzing, the way they had been practicing for weeks, my sister